From Personality, Emotions, and Behavioural Mastery in the Thought of Lev Vygotsky, An

From “Personality, Emotions, and Behavioural Mastery in the thought of Lev Vygotsky,” an unpublished manuscript, PhD thesis by Michael G. Levykh.

It is interesting that the word “internalization” does not quite reflect the dynamic, affective, and developmental characteristics of the Russian word vraschivaniye. Vraschivaniye means ingrowing or growing into something new, and reflects the appearance of “active, nurturing [italics added] transformation of externals into personally meaningful experience” (Fawley, 1997; cited by Lantoff, 2003, p. 350). For example, the child’s successful internalization during infancy depends on the quality of the affective relationship established by the caregiver. For Example, infants’ initial interests in the external world and their positive attitudes towards adults are generalized towards every activity presented by adults. Thus, a successful internalization (vraschivaniye) can take place when emotionally positive relationships are established by adults or caregivers.

Although Vygotsky (1930) opposed the “botanical” view of the child’s development, he admitted that the psychologists of his time still “talk about the growth (development) of the child personality (leachnost) and…call the system of cultivation and fostering in young age (vospitaniye) the garden (short for kindergarten)” (chapter 1, para. 2; my translation). However, despite being a part of the garden metaphor, vraschivaniye, for him, was the only word to fully identify the process of internalization. Just as a successful vraschivaniye leads to the growth of plants, trees, bushes, and flowers, a successful internalization leads to cultural development – the development of higher psychological functions and systems.

Should any process of transformation from social to individual under less desirable (than optimal) conditions, which does not lead to cultural development, be called internalization? Although he does not provide answers to this question, Vygotsky (1993) specifically makes a distinction between cultural development and cultural disintegration, calling the regression of development a disontogenesis(roughly equivalent to “defective” or “distorted development,” Kozulin & Gindis, 2007, pp. 340, 342). Building on this distinction, I personally tend to refer to any transformation from social to individual that does not facilitate individual cultural development as an appropriation and/or interiorization, reserving the word internalization for instances in which emotionally laden transformation is successful, and hence leads to cultural development.[1]

Thus, in my opinion, internalization (vraschivaniye = ingrowing)is an emotionally laden “revolutionary” process of active and nurturing transformation from the social into the individual (personally meaningful experience), from natural to cultural, and from lower mental functions to higher mental functions.

[1]It should be noted that it is common among some researchers to use the word “appropriation” instead of “internalization” (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1995; Wertsch, 1991, 1995). Although among other words related to the process of internalization Vygotsky (2005/1930) also used the foreign word “interiorizatciya” (interiorization),it might seem premature to draw overly strong conclusions from pure linguistic considerations and comparisons, especially concerning the meaning and usage of foreign words. For example, due to the similarity in sound and spelling, the word “aktual’niy” in Russian might be mistakenly translated into the English word “actual” which means genuine, factual, and realistic (Funk & Wagnalls, 1982; Wheeler, 1972). However, the first and foremost meaning of the Russian adjective “aktual’niy” is “current or very important to current issues” (Ozhegov, 1961). In addition, as supported by A.A. Leontiev (2001; cited in Vygotsky, 2005, Introduction, p. 7), Vygotsky’sfavorite way of expressing the process of internalizationwas “vraschivaniye” (in-growing, growing into).